


made of memories you bury (or live by)

by concertine



Series: stray italian greyhound [2]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Alternate Universe - His Dark Materials, Angst and Feels, Attempts at humour, Avocados at Law, Bechdel Test Pass, F/M, I Will Go Down With This Ship, Karen Page the 90s Tech-Angel, Law School Dorks, Left-Handed Darcy Lewis, Matt's Allergic To Feelings, SHIP DARCY WITH ALL THE THINGS, swearing I guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-03
Updated: 2016-02-03
Packaged: 2018-05-17 23:14:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5888887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/concertine/pseuds/concertine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy Lewis, and six people that change her life, for better or worse.</p><p>(Okay, so one of them's her dæmon, but whatever. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	made of memories you bury (or live by)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shuofthewind](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shuofthewind/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Price of War](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3903400) by [shuofthewind](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shuofthewind/pseuds/shuofthewind). 



> This has taken way too long to do, and ended up being like twice its original intended size, but w/e. If there are typos, bite me.
> 
> Dæmon list:
> 
> Darcy - red panda (Miles)  
> Matt - asiatic golden cat (Ariane)  
> Foggy - African pygmy hedgehog (Margo)  
> Karen - Arctic tern (Noah)  
> Jane - vervet monkey (Dezi)  
> Elektra - martial eagle (Alastair)  
> Fisk - northern goshawk (Leila)
> 
> Trigger warnings for: Bruises & stitches, nightmares, tad bit of sexism & slut-shaming, LGBTQA+-phobia (mainly homophobia and biphobia), some PTSD elements, some swearing, y'all, it's Daredevil, you get the drill.
> 
> Title from "Never Look Away"; series title from "Stray Italian Greyhound." Both are by Vienna Teng.
> 
> On!

**i. miles.**

 

Darcy’s fifteen when her dæmon settles. Most dæmons of the Lewis Clan (capitals necessary) are something domestic, something common. Her dad’s Macie is a brown-and-white spotted wild hare, with soft, soft fur and blinking brown eyes, her mother’s dæmon a sleek fennec fox. Darcy’s older brother Nick’s chickadee dæmon is Cami (she’s got this bright, whistling song that is really cheery when you need a pick-me-up but absolutely _awful_ in the morning when everyone’s a zombie before their first cup of coffee), and everyone thought Irene and Cosima the Russian Blue was about as different as it got. (Irene’s bi and Darcy always wants to punch people in the face when they get that eyebrow-raising look upon finding out. As if everyone with same-sex dæmons are automatically homosexual, as if Irene can’t like men and women both, because fuck you, her big sister’s awesome, and so is her girlfriend.)

Darcy’s…unexpected. Her parents had Irene and Nick fairly early on in life, so Darcy’s eight-years-after arrival was kind of like a Christmas present someone forgot to give you arriving the next August – cool, but more than a little weird. Everything about her was an unplanned event, so when Miles ends up not only settling late, but as a red panda, of all things, well, the whole Lewis Clan more or less throws up their hands simultaneously, like, _what else was gonna happen_?

It stings a little, sure, but Miles post-settling is undoubtedly the best thing to ever happen to Darcy. The fear of wearing her soul (because her dæmon is her soul, he’s Darcy Victoria Lewis put inside the body of an animal and given a different name) outside her skin like that buzzes around for a bit, but he’s so _right_ that Darcy stops worrying about it and learns to kick up her heels a little higher as she walks the halls of her high school. Nothing had ever before been so purely right in her entire life, the moment he settled like an epiphany, a revelation. If Darcy was the believing sort, that split second alone would have been enough to convert her.

-

Later on when she’s sixteen, Miles bites a freshman boy who makes fun of her for her baggy hoodies and calls her a slut for her curves, and it’s exactly what Darcy wants to do as well – bite and rage and snarl and snap. Instead, she puts a smile on her face (with teeth, because Darcy Lewis always shows her teeth) and faces the little fuckboy and _spits_ out a threat she doesn’t even remember. The kid runs, away down the math hallway with his unsettled dæmon shape-shifting, blurry with speed and terror. Darcy doesn’t know whether to be triumphant or not.

(She mostly feels sick.)

And then she’s eighteen, and it’s the last day of her first week at Culver. Her roommate leaves, their dorm blessedly, finally silent. Darcy closes her computer a little blankly, not knowing why she opened it in the first place, looks at Miles, and thinks she might – she might actually cry. Her dæmon curls into her arms without a word, and Darcy draws her knees up against his fur and blinks the homesickness away, breathing in the scent of him, slow and soft and sure.

 

* * *

 

**ii. jane.**

 

Darcy’s first introduced to Jane through the Faculty of Science’s bulletin board. She doesn’t normally go around reading every corkboard on Culver’s not-so-hallowed walls, but she’s waiting for her boyfriend, a chem student (who’s _late_ , by the way, for the fifth time in a row, and so totally dumped) and gets bored, so she starts to scan the walls for something to read. The internship catches her eye because a) ladies in STEM, heck yes, and b) she kind of hasn’t gotten any of her mandatory science credits yet, despite being in her third year of university. Oops? Anyway, the offer looks cool and the picture they have up of Jane is _smoking hot_ , plus it would help her get all of her science credits, so Darcy figures, why the hell not? It’s worth a shot.

She stops waiting for Chris (he was twenty fucking minutes late, so he completely deserved it), and calls the number listed on the board instead of sending him a text telling him so.

Two hours later, she gets a call from one Doctor Jane Foster, Ph.D., who spoke breathlessly into the phone, asking her when she could meet for lunch.

-

Her first thought upon seeing Jane is _oh my god, she’s so tiny_. Darcy’s no beanstalk, but Jane’s five foot two at most, and where Darcy’s curvy, she’s all straight lines and _cheekbones, holy god_. Jane introduces Darcy to her dæmon as they sit down – Dezi the vervet, with intelligent eyes that gleam in the sunlight coming in through the windows of the university coffeeshop. She’d known, vaguely, somewhere in the back of her mind that Jane was a member of the Culver faculty, but seeing her on campus was an entirely different story.

“So, uh. Here’s my résumé.” Darcy sips at her coffee and hands over the manila folder. Jane has a vaguely frazzled look about her, like she’s not entirely present; probably a side effect of toxic IQ levels. “I’mnotasciencemajor,” she adds really fast. What? Darcy _needs_ those science credits.

Jane blinks and looks up from the résumé. “What?” A beat. Then: “It says here you’re a political science major.”

“Um, yeah, I am.” Dezi hums from where he’s curled up against the window.

“Why do you want this internship then?” Jane asks. “You know it’s unpaid, right?”

“I need science credits in order to graduate, but I don’t really have the space in my timetable to take courses for them, and I saw your offer on the Faculty of Science’s bulletin board, so. Thought I might give it a try.”

It’s Jane’s turn to hum now as she flips through Darcy’s résumé. “Can you make coffee?” she asks.

Darcy nods.

“Great. You’ve got the job.”

Miles jerks in surprise, and Darcy chokes on her chocolate mocha. “Wait, really?”

Jane sighs. “To be honest, you’re the only applicant. I’m really starting to worry about the caliber of the science students at this point.”

“Yeah, I can vouch for that. Chemistry majors suck,” Darcy says, thinking of her now-ex-boyfriend. “M’glad you’re a physicist, Doctor Foster. _Way_ cooler.”

Jane and Dezi wrinkle their noses in unison. It’s horrifically cute. “Ugh. Please don’t call me that, it makes me sound old. Jane’s fine.”

“Right on!"

-

And then, of course, Jane hits Thor with her car, and IPOD THIEVES and SIF + THE WARRIORS THREE and FUCKING INDESTRUCTIBLE AUTOMATONS CALLED DESTROYER WHAT IS HER LIFE happen (Darcy’s always going to be proud of tasering Thor, by the way. It’s her sole claim to fame, even if her hypothetical grandkids will laugh at her for it. Hey, those hypothetical kiddies have got her genes, and Darcy would’ve laughed at her too.), and Thor boots it back up to Asgard to defeat Loki.

Jane and Erik eventually go to New York to commence research on the rainbow bridge, because after New Mexico they’re more or less out of money, and Stark had offered them a hell lot of funding and brand spanking-new labs in Stark Tower. Either way, they figure Stark is better than SHIELD, and since where Jane goes, so goes her nation, Darcy applies for a transfer to Columbia University to finish her last year of undergrad.

(She gets in. Some of it might be thanks to the fact that Jane and Erik both wrote her reference letters, and that _Pepper goddamn Potts_ added one of her own to the mix when she found out. Darcy met Pepper while finishing interning for Jane at SI over the summer and training Intern Samuel to adequately take her place. Pepper is made of awesome. Darcy attributes the rest of it to her own amazingness and she and Miles get drunk with Tony Stark to celebrate – say what you will, but Tony has fantastic booze.)

Jane gets a little sad when Darcy announces her acceptance, so hugs and visits are promised, as well as _if Intern Samuel ever does anything wrong, just say the word. Darcy Lewis and her Stark-modified taser will be back in no time, seriously, Jane, I’m going to be on 116th and Broadway, not Alaska_.

All in all, it’s with a bit of a gloomy heart that Darcy leaves her internship, because come on, Janey-Jane is definitely going to be the best boss/BFF she’s ever going to get, and Darcy’s going to fucking _miss her, goddamnit_.

(The Lewis Clan is ecstatic that the runt of the family and her conspicuously uncommon red panda dæmon are going to an Ivy League school, the result being that when Darcy goes back to good ol’ Lewis HQ in Alexandria, VA, she gets a lot of her mom’s home-baked blackberry pies. There’s good in everything.)

 

* * *

 

**iii. matt.**

 

Coming back to school and defined schedules after almost a year of throwaway wake-up times and pop-tarts is a little rough, so when Darcy walks into her Criminal Justice classroom on her second day back, she’s more or less starting to regret signing up for a nine o’clock elective.

She hears the sound of Matt’s cane on the floor as she sets up her seat, tapping _left-right left-right_. The seats are the old-fashioned kind where the desks are attached to the chairs, so left-handed Darcy is forced to pick the only leftie chair in the room to avoid breaking her spine. All the rows are in seats of two, but Darcy’s chair had clearly been thrown onto the end of a random row as an afterthought, making the aisle between her desk and the adjacent row about twice as narrow.

 _’Preciate it, higher education system_ , she thinks as she swings up her desk. Miles curls up on it immediately, taking up the entire space. When Darcy scowls at him, he flicks his tail and whispers, “ _Incoming_.”

Darcy blinks, forgetting to be annoyed, and hears the tapping sound come from a distance again, growing closer, until –

“Whoa, man, watch out. Desk at 12 o’clock.” The voice comes from Darcy’s left, and she twists around to see two guys, one with long hair, a hedgehog daemon poking its nose out of his bag and another wearing tinted glasses, a cane half-poised in the air in front of him with a golden cat at his feet.

“Desk?” The second guy asks.

“Uh, yeah, it’s kind of making the way really narrow. Not sure how we’re going to get across unless we double back,” Long Hair says.

Glasses hums. “Anyone sitting?”

“Well –” Long Hair looks at Darcy, pauses, looks back at his friend, and clears his throat. “Hi! I’m Foggy, this is Matt, this is Margo, that’s Ari, and – are those seats free?”

An awkward silence. Darcy shrugs. “Have at ‘em.”

-

She falls into friendship slowly. Crim-Just is kind of a shitty course, but Matt and Foggy make it better. Darcy learns to lose herself in the classroom, Miles warm in her lap, learns just the right way to tease Foggy to get him riled up, learns how to crack jokes that bring Matt’s slowly curling smile to life. (There’s a wicked corner to that smile that lights a torch in her, but she learns, too, to never think of it.)

The friendship is like blown glass at first, like spun sunlight, breakable and flimsy on her skin. Eventually, though, it settles, weighing heavier and heavier, a secure thing somewhere behind her ribcage, in her belly. Darcy wonders a little if the growing pressure of it will weigh her down. She’s never been good at relationships (okay, Jane and Miles don’t count), and this new friendship, this Darcy-Matt-Foggy being, trifecta, triumvirate, means the kinds of commitments Darcy doesn’t know how to make, the kind of steady steadfast _goodness_ she doesn’t think she has.

They go out drinking to Josie’s one warm night (what a divey bar, seriously, it’s sketchier than Foggy’s Punjabi homework) and lay claim to a table. A moth buzzes lazily around the dim light above them, the laminated green table chipped and sticky. Darcy tries not to touch it too much.

The boys get drunk. It’s one of the rare days when Darcy doesn’t feel like drinking (Tony Stark and his fancy labels have made her a tad bit picky when it comes to alcohol but she’ll never admit it), so she sips idly at her whiskey while Matt and Foggy argue about which drinks they’re going to get. They bicker back and forth about it until Darcy slams her hands on the table. Ew, gross.

“Boys,” she says. “Get martinis. You’re giving me a headache.”

Foggy comes back with two poorly made martinis a minute later, and Darcy steals Matt’s and replaces it with her whiskey, winking at Ari to prevent her from tattling. Matt, doubtless because he’s pretty damn tipsy, doesn’t realise until he takes a gulp of it and winds up coughing.

“ _Darcy_.”

“So _this_ is why you made me buy martinis,” Foggy says. He toasts her. “Cheers.”

She tips her head back and drains the drink. And if the way Matt says her name, voice low and whiskey-rough, replays itself in her head for the rest of the night, well, that’s nobody’s business but her own.

-

Sometimes Darcy has nightmares, ones that leave her gasping and clutching at her blankets, at Miles, at anything she can. They’re usually about the 2012 invasion, about the screams and the gunshots and the terror, and the little details, picked out and hyperfocused on by a mind stretched too thin in all the wrong places: Matt’s raspy breathing behind her, Foggy strung like a wire, tight enough to flay skin, Miles trembling in her arms, the edges of her taser cutting into her fist.

It’s always the panic that gets her the most, though, drumming a hole through her skull, primal instinct barely reined in. Panic for Jane, who’d gotten stuffed halfway across the world (Darcy had been pretty damn mad about it, but right then there was only relief mixed in with fear, _what if she isn’t safe enough, what if she’s in danger there too_ ), and for Thor. And always, above all, pressing panic for Matt, for Matt and Ari and Foggy and Margo and her own damn self, and the knowledge that Darcy would _die_ – god, god god god god God, she’d die a thousand times, a million times, over and over and over again if it would save these people.

Darcy’s – not entirely sure what to do with that knowledge.

It’s particularly bad one night, as the memory dissolves into inky blackness, and she’s not sure if she’s awake or still asleep but all that’s left is fear, and maybe her eyes are open or maybe they’re still closed, but either way her legs are lead and she’s suffocating, choked to death by nothing –

And then there are arms around her, and warmth, and Darcy’s so afraid she lashes out, teeth clipping the edge of her tongue, but no, it’s Matt, it’s Matt, who had fallen asleep sprawled on her couch after a late night working on a project. His voice is low and soft and timid, and she doesn’t know what he’s saying but she takes in a shaking breath in anyway. It feels like the first breath she’s ever taken, and to her horror the exhale comes out as a crooked tearless sob.

Matt flails a little, pulling away, but Darcy reaches for him, drags him back. He seems to settle back down when he realises she’s not crying, and lets out a long puff of air that stirs against the crown of her head. Distantly, she senses Ari patting Miles with a clumsy paw, the first and only time Ari’s ever been anything but graceful. Darcy might’ve eventually fallen asleep, shaking the nightmare out of her system. She’s not entirely sure, but what she does know is that when her alarm rings, Matt’s still there, fingers tangled in her hair, eyes open.

They don’t really talk about it.

-

Her 1L year is awful.

First Jane goes to London with Erik (really, Jane, and don’t even talk to Darcy about Erik, she’d sent him an email with therapist recommendations and every time she thinks of how Loki messed with his mind she kind of wants to cry) and almost gets herself killed. (Only Pepper and a lot of Stark liquor had kept her from straight-up tasering Intern Samuel, because _what the hell, bro, I trained you fucking better than this_ , but she still replaces him with the far superior Intern Maureen.) Then Thor comes back (!!!), which is a really good thing because Darcy loves Thor and his puppy face to pieces, but that triggers a ton of post-NDE-sex with Jane, which in turn triggers a slightly traumatic experience upon one of Darcy’s visits she’d rather not talk about. She is never getting those brain cells back.

In the midst of all this chaos, enter Elektra Natchios. Elektra’s a badass with an outrageously gorgeous face and a dæmon every bit as different as Darcy’s own. Darcy’s happy for her and Matt, she really really is, especially as Matt finally breaks his never-more-than-a-month relationship streak and Ari starts purring out of the blue, but.

But.

There’s something different about Matt during the time he’s with Elektra, something off-puttingly distant Darcy can’t quite put her finger on. He never seems to be listening, and at first she attributes it to infatuation, but quickly realises that it isn’t just that. Matt’s never listening, rarely laughing, and comes back looking mysteriously battered, no matter how many times he says he’s fine, no matter how many furtive glances she and Foggy exchange behind his back while he drifts farther and farther away, remote, detached, separate.

(It’s this –

Matt’s glasses had never seemed like a barrier before.)

(And it hurts, because she’s forced to acknowledge that maybe there is something Matt’s hiding as he tilts his head and the mirrored lenses catch the light, something he’s not telling her, that maybe there’s even more, another secret beyond Elektra, beyond their friendship, but Darcy doesn’t think about that until three years later, the punch of Matt’s words like gunshot wounds.)

Then Matt and Elektra break up, and Darcy never sees Elektra again. A week later, after a beautifully glorious bar trip to Josie’s that ends with all six of them more drunk than anywhere Tony’s ever gotten her, Matt’s himself again, dust in sunlight, and Ariane as carelessly affectionate with Miles as she used to be.

He never talks about Elektra, though, always steering the conversation off-topic whenever somebody brings her up, and Darcy assumes it’s because of bad memories. Six months is more or less a record for Matt, and he’d seemed to be genuinely in love with Elektra. Of course it’d hurt to think of her.

(Oh, if only she knew.)

-

They graduate (Matt’s _summa cum laude_ , the overachieving jerk) from Columbia in the summer of 2015. Free from the clutches of Landman & Zack and the Bar exam, they open Nelson, Murdock, and Lewis, Attorneys at Law. Everything goes brilliantly for – ah, several hours. Yeah. Then, as usual, all hell breaks loose.

 

* * *

 

 

**iv. karen.**

 

Karen Page looks out at Darcy through red-rimmed blue eyes. She’s so beautiful, even here in a prison cell with handcuffs and concrete. Beautiful, and fierce, and brave, and strong, a sleek arctic tern perched on her shoulder, watching Darcy’s every move.

“His name is Noah,” Karen says to her in a voice that only barely cracks at the seams, and all of a sudden it’s her third year of undergrad, and Jane Foster is looking at Darcy from across a coffeeshop table and saying _his name is Dezi_ in the beginning of a friendship that would change Darcy’s life.

Darcy swallows hard.

“His is Miles.”

She can already tell that Karen Page is going to change her life; she just hopes it’s as good a change as Jane.

-

“You know,” Karen says to her while they grab food one day, after everything is over and done with, “Everyone – everyone’s something to somebody else. It’s like your whole existence is based on what other people see you as.”

“Mmm?” Darcy replies, which maybe isn’t the best of answers, but her mouth is full of delicious shawarma (yet another thing Tony’s infected her with) and she can’t swallow just yet. Karen doesn’t mind.

“The thing is, you’re always somebody’s sister, somebody’s daughter, somebody’s friend. For a while there, I – I was nobody. I was nobody’s sister, nobody’s daughter, nobody’s friend. I had no reference point.”

Darcy finishes her bite.

“That’s not true,” she says, and watches Karen’s eyebrows go up as Darcy jabs a plastic fork at her.

“You were our client, and then our secretary, and then our very own personal badass, fighting a constant war against our crappy 90s tech. You’re my friend and I love you and I wouldn’t give you up even if you started demanding _pay_ , god forbid. You’ve always been something, Karen. Always.”

Karen blinks hard, and Noah flutters his wings. When they speak, it’s with Noah’s voice.

“You’re good people, Darcy Lewis.”

Darcy smiles, and takes another huge bite of shawarma to disguise the fact that she’s too choked up to talk.

 

* * *

 

 

**v. foggy.**

 

The first impression Darcy has of Foggy, besides a ridiculously adorable dæmon and Hufflepuff sunshine, is _wow, that guy needs a haircut_. He likes his hair, though, and Margo gives her the melted-chocolate eyes every time she mentions a haircut, so Darcy applies the “live and let live” philosophy and lets it be.

But then 2L happens, and Foggy’s hair turns absolutely godawful. Matt’s on a date one night in October (he usually takes Foggy’s side on the no-haircuts debate), and Darcy takes advantage of the opportunity to wheedle Foggy into a trim with the promise of poppyseed bagels and team studying (their Bluebook test was two days after).

She’s in the middle of dealing with split ends when Foggy abruptly asks her a question.

“What do you think of Matt’s new date?”

Darcy pauses mid-snip. “What do you mean? It’s Crystal from International Law and she’s always nice, though I would’ve thought you knew that.”

Foggy flaps a hand impatiently. “No, I know it’s Crystal. I meant what you think of him dating again after…you know, Elektra.”

Miles shifts uncomfortably on Darcy’s shoulder. “I think it’s great he’s moving on, if that’s what you mean.”

Margo’s unnaturally still on Foggy’s arm. “No, no – not like that –” Foggy sighs. “Look, both of us know Matt was a little weird when he was with Elektra. And he got kind of messed up when they broke up, so, I’m just. Worried."

“Yeah, but that relationship was _intense_ , Foggy. Like, way more intense than his usual _three-weeks-and-it-didn’t-work-out_ sorta deal. Besides, it’s not like Crystal’s going to rip his heart out or vice versa, so I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.” She cuts at a lock of Foggy’s hair with perhaps more enthusiasm than she should.

There’s a bit of silence broken only by the sound of Darcy’s scissors. The next time Foggy speaks, it’s unusually quiet.

“You’re really not bothered by him dating again?” Margo trains her eyes on Darcy and Miles stares right back. Darcy folds her arms, narrowly avoiding jabbing herself with the scissors.

“Foggy, what’s this really about?”

“Answer the question, Darce.”

Miles breaks Margo’s gaze.

“No,” Darcy says. “No, I’m not.”

 

* * *

  

**vi. daredevil.**

 

The truth creeps up on Darcy like ivy on a wall: slowly, slowly, and then one day you look out your window and realise you’re drowning in it.

 _He’s not_ , she thinks. _He’s – he’s not, he can’t be, it’s just your stupid imagination again, god, Darcy, he’s your best friend, he wouldn’t have lied to you, he wouldn’t have, he wouldn’t have_ _–_

But the images of Matt, unreasonably bruised (he said he walked into a wall, said he tripped over some stairs, said it was just stress, nothing to worry about, and you believed him), and Ari, always on edge, flash into her mind again and again, and _why is Matt never home in the evenings_?

Then the car crash happens (or at least Matt says it was a car crash), and Karen comes back from her visit to Matt’s apartment silent, with red-rimmed eyes like the first time Darcy had met her, and Margo snarls at everything, and Darcy comes to work one day to find their brand new plaque in the garbage can and Foggy MIA.

 _Goddamnit, Murdock_ , she thinks, and grabs Foggy’s key.

-

He’s so much worse than she expected.

He’s – he’s _so much worse_ , and all of a sudden Darcy’s throat is hot and tight. Matt doesn’t have his shirt on, and there are bruises and scabs and – and _stitches everywhere, fuck him_. Miles paces nervously at her feet, claws click-clacking on the floor. Darcy drops her purse and doesn’t care if her phone breaks, doesn’t care if the faulty zipper on her coin purse pops off again, doesn’t care about anything but Matt and the way he looks right now.

He keeps his eyes closed, face half-cast downward, gripping Ari’s fur. He looks like he’s _scared of her_ , and somehow that hurts more than anything else, because Matt’s never been scared of her before, he’s never wanted to avoid her, not even through Elektra. He looks like he doesn’t want her there, and Darcy knows he’s blind and couldn’t see her anyway but she just wants him to open his eyes, just open his eyes, not turn his face away like he can’t bear to even face her.

But a beat passes, and he still doesn’t do anything, so Darcy swallows past the lump in her throat (because if her mother had taught her anything, it was that if you want something you have to go get it yourself) to speak, to snap, to be angry with him, to be anything but this, vines crawling up her skin and a half-formed shape of a secret prickling at the back of her mind along with all the lies she’s never told.

“Jesus, Matt,” Darcy says. “Jesus. What – what the _hell_ happened to you? You – you don’t end up looking like _this_ from a car accident!” And yeah, sure, it wasn’t exactly what she’d intended to say, but it was get mad or burst into tears.

Matt stays quiet, though, and Darcy’s so angry suddenly, furious at him for making her feel this way, furious at his silence and his secrets, furious at how he tries to hurt himself and ends up inflicting pain on everyone else instead, furious, absolutely furious, at herself for being upset by how he’s acting.

_If you want something, Darcy, honey, you should know to go get it. Doesn’t matter what anyone else says, even me. Don’t you ever let anyone tell you what you want._

“Matt.” Her voice breaks, and the anger’s gone now, a trace, a shadow, and only this overwhelming betrayal left in its place. More secrets whispering themselves to her now, saying things she doesn’t want to hear. “Matt. Would you – god _damn_ it, Matthew, Ariane, both of you, would you look at me?”

His eyes open. She refuses to let herself be relieved.

“I know there’s something you’re not telling me,” Darcy says. “I know, Matt, something’s fucked up between you and Foggy and Karen was almost in tears today because _neither of you were at work_ , and I’d think – I’d think that whatever you told Foggy you could’ve told me, y’know, because – I mean, I don’t know, I thought –”

She’s tumbling, she’s a mess, words spilling from under her throat and bones and nails, out and over her tongue, tangled and twisted, tripping over themselves to get out, to be spoken.

Matt cuts her off, and his voice is defeated, broken, desperate. “No, I can’t, I can’t, Darcy, there’s nothing, forget about it. Please.”

 _He’s lying_.

 _Shut up_ , thinks Darcy, but there’s a truth being born in her mind now, along with another one that’s been there, been there ever since the very first day. _Shut_ up!

Ivy, creeping up over her, leaves rustling in the sound of forgotten memories, wrapping her up until she chokes on the immensity of it, too great now to ignore.

When Matt speaks, his eyes are closed again, his voice soft, almost pleading with her, and Darcy prays he’s going to deny it, prays he’ll banish her doubts, because even if she knows he’s lying it’ll still be less painful than honesty.

He says:

“Please, Darcy. Please.”

 _He’s lying_.

The dam bursts.

“Please what?” she exclaims. “Please stop, Darcy, or – or please leave, go back home, go away and – and pretend? I worked with Jane Foster, Matt, I can tell bullshitting when I see it.” A breath, a second, possibly two, perhaps eternity, and then the rest of it forces itself into form, into what can never be taken back.

“Or maybe –” Darcy falls, breaks, puts herself back together again. “Maybe I should stop, y’know, _loving you_ , just like you should stop being the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen?”

Matt flinches, and it’s true, it’s truth. Miles digs his claws into the floor.

 _He’s always been lying_.

Ariane slips off the couch, soundless, and Darcy can only watch as she presses one golden paw to her shin.

The silence echoes in her mind, smothering, suffocating. If Miles is Darcy Lewis put outside her skin, then Ari is Matt, in his purest, most distilled form.

Matt. Matt. His dæmon touching her skin. _Matthew Murdock_ , saying more than a thousand secrets ever could.

Miles hisses, low.

“Get well soon.” The words taste bitter against her lips.

Darcy leaves.

-

Fisk is taken down, and Daredevil blasts his way to the front page of the paper. Darcy watches Karen’s knowing smile and Foggy’s resigned one, and thinks, they know.

If Foggy can forgive him, she tells herself, then so can she.

The firm’s in the paper too not long after Fisk’s arrest – _**NELSON, MURDOCK AND LEWIS**_.

Darcy likes the fact that they took out the Oxford comma. _Murdock and Lewis_.

She wonders if that could, maybe, one day, become truth.

-

The day Matt tells Darcy he loves her, it’s raining outside. Foggy’s out interviewing a new client (huzzah! Actual Money!) and Karen’s gone with him, so it’s just Darcy and Matt in the office when the clock strikes five.

She gathers her stuff and is about to leave when she hears Matt clear his throat.

“We need to talk,” he says.

“Yes,” she replies. “We do.”

They’re in his apartment (that fucking billboard lights all of them up pink, and she briefly considers moving the conversation to Matt’s bedroom, except she’s kind of afraid she might jump him or something – he is incredibly pretty, but tapping that now is also an incredibly _bad idea_.) when he starts to talk.

And she lets him. Oh, she lets him. And when he finishes, she punches him just like how her older brother taught her, a damn right hook straight to the chest.

She doesn’t really remember what she said after that, but there were a lot of _how dare you_ s and swear words and oh, yeah, she might’ve accidentally outed Karen as knowing Daredevil’s real identity, but nothing compares at that moment to how angry she is with him, at him, despite him.

When Darcy runs out of words, she lets Miles do what both of them have been wanting to do for the past two weeks – _Darcy_ doesn’t jump Matt, but her dæmon does, tail coiling over Matt’s clavicle as Matt and Ari suck in a breath simultaneously.

“Yeah,” Matt’s voice is a rasp, but he doesn’t clear his throat. “Yeah, I think that about covers it.”

“Shut up,” Darcy tells him.

And then?

Well, she wants to kiss him.

So she does.


End file.
